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Python Trademark Filer Ignorant of Python?
WebMink writes "Is it possible that the CEO of the company that's trying to file a trademark on 'Python' was unaware of Python's importance as a programming technology? That's what he claims — despite running a hosting company that's trying to break into cloud computing, where Python is used extensively. Still, he also regards the Python Software Foundation as a hostile American company and thinks that getting attention from half the world's geeks is a DDoS. From the article: '[The CEO, Tim Poultney,] confirmed that he'd not involved any technical staff in the decisions he'd made about the Python product brand, and told me he regretted that as it would probably have helped him understand the likely reaction to his trademark challenge. ... He said he now understood how offended the global developer community are and told me there was obviously only one outcome that was now possible.'"
nft
Resignation?
As a young wannabe programmer, I feel that this company has to be pretty clueless to be in the computing business and not know about one of the most popular programming languages today. The fact that it uses the largely meaningless and sensationalistic "cloud computing" buzzword also harms its credibility.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
The article seems to end on a cliffhanger. What outcome is the article writer referring to? There are many that spring to mind.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This is a crystal clear example of CEO arrogance
If I was registering a new company, the last thing I would want to give my company or servers etc is a name that already pulls up millions of pages in a simple web search.
It just sounds like somebody was clueless and doesn't even know how people find services on the internet these days.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Suicide would be the only honorable thing to do at this point. By reptilian strangulation would be appropriate.
No kidding. EVERYONE who's ANYONE knows the Cloud run on Ruby.
THL phish sticks
[The CEO, Tim Poultney,] confirmed that he'd not involved any technical staff in the decisions he'd made about the Python product brand
Seriously? I know a lot of CEOs have more branding experience than many developers but making single-minded decisions about your company's future, with no input from those who are likely to be affected most by those decisions, does not sound like the thinking of a leader.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Python may not be at the center of the universe, but if your company sells Cloud computing products, it is pretty damn close.
It is the equivalent of knowing how to speak English but being unaware that there is a geographic area called England.
But this isn't 95% of the population, it's a company trying to break into cloud computing. I realize you don't have to be an area expert to be CEO, but I'd expect them to have googled what you're trying to sell once or twice.
Dude, you're an idiot.
If you google the word "python" THE TOP FOUR HITS ARE ALL ABOUT THE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE. After that, we have one Wikipedia article on the snake, and then FOUR MORE ABOUT THE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE.
You're telling me you wouldn't even google the fucking name of a trademark you're going to use just to see what else comes up?!!?
When eight of the top nine results for a one-word search of your proposed trademark ALL refer to ONE thing ... maybe you should look into it.
Anyone preparing to start a new company and name it "Perl" ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If didn't know about python, then the company wasn't about computers anyway, probably they assumed that computers were just fancy furniture.
If you are part of IT world and never heard of Python, then God help your company. No, seriously.
"It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad."
CEO, Tim Poultney: All right, we'll call it a draw.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Google Search had only just launched in September 1997, and this guy initially started using the term as far back as that.
Of course, Python existed as a programming language for an additional 6 years before that, so really, this is just about somebody not doing a little bit of homework.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
My $0.02 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asp_(reptile) What could possibly go wrong?
An attorney is ignorant. No news here. Move along.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
and instead should be legally and scientifically classified as some sort of vermin.
The Python compiler is the native code compiler used in (likely) the most popular Common Lisp implementation on the planet, SBCL. It was originally part of CMUCL, which SBCL initially forked from, and predated "that other scripting language".
It's not that hard to coexist with conflicting names, if you're not an idiot. Obviously, that's not the case with this CEO, and Tim Poultney's name will be linked to this asinine attempt at overreach for the foreseeable future.
There were search engines before Google. Lycos was even pretty decent by pre-Google standards; other people had other preferences.
No, I don't know how well-known Python (the language) was back then, and I don't know whether ordinary people would have thought "I should do a web search on that" in those days, but I'm pretty sure the information would have been available. Hell, when was python.org registered? The copyright notice at the bottom begins with 1990.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Folly is the cloak of knavery
If a person who runs a hosting company is not even familiar with a major programming language that is widely used for web development, his credibility is seriously questionable. It is the equivalent of a car dealership whose owner has never heard of Ferrari.
Palm trees and 8
It is the equivalent of knowing how to speak English but being unaware that there is a geographic area called England.
So, a not-so-insignificant portion of America?
Altavista - die heretic!
How about a Ruby implementation written in Python? (Topaz)
http://topaz.readthedocs.org/en/latest/blog/announcing-topaz/
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
Not every /. reader knew / knows / was-interested / cared about OpenBSD back then but the back story is quite interesting:
http://www.theos.com/dispute.html
So, a not-so-insignificant portion of America?
I think virtually Americans know there is a geographic area called England, but I also think many of them would be hard-pressed to point to it on a map with labels. We learn to mock England in elementary school, or I did anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Right into the hacker's botnet.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Why didn't the Python foundation just trademark first? Whats clearly happening is that the foundation is crying home to mommy because they waited on getting the trademark, well to bad, you lost deal with it.
We do want him off the internet and it is a DDoS.
What a piece of...
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
If I were to register a trademark for my new company, during the process of making up a name, the first thing I'd do is to use it as search query in Google to see if anyone may be using it. Wikipedia's entry on nr. 10 is the first that's not about the programming language.
So even if he didn't know about the programming language, it seems he hasn't done any research at all on the current use of the name, and whether there are any clashes with their intended use of the brand.
Mind that it is no problem to have two or more companies using the same trademark, as long as they are in separate markets (either geographically or different product range - think e.g. the iPhone mobile phone brand in Brazil, and Apple Music vs. Apple Computer).
Oh snap!
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
possibly by Shaw
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
What do you think Google would have said in October 1997 (over 15 years ago, perhaps that's where the 15 years comes from?) when the company in question registered python.co.uk? Nothing probably since they didn't call themselves Google until 1998.
My "cloud" is running on perl. Has been for over 12 years now. Last major change to the code was adding support to return data in JSON as well as XML a few years ago. Now get off meh lawn.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
going by whois: Created On:27-Mar-1995 05:00:00 UTC
Comment same as title?
dude, you are an idiot. Google search results are tailored for the person doing the searching. Which is to say, the top 4 results are likely not the same for him, as it is for you.
Poke the snake and get bitten.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Reminds me of the time my boss wanted to call a new line of cleaning products "Blue Ice". He wasnt amused when I pointed out that in addition to the well known cooler packs, customers searching for us would be getting results mentioning frozen balls of piss & shit ejected from airliners, and Walter White's blue wonder meth lol
Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property; A Corporation is the legal fiction that property is a person.
Hotbot says EXTERMINATE
Of course, it was remarkably easy to make an unfortunate typo whilst trying to land at hotbot.com...
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Only if you can shove Jython in there somehow...
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I'd say the fact that he thinks Python-the-language is something American is proof that he's pretty much completely unaware of it. Unless Holland was annexed by the US recently, while I wasn't looking, I think it's Dutch. :)
Comment same as title?
Yes, of course.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
And everyone knows Ruby runs on Rails!
Of course rails are very inflexible. You can only go in the direction the builder of the rails envisioned.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Slashdot should create a poll for a new company name. If they don't have enought brains to use a search engine they need all the help we can give them.
To keep the snake motif I would suggest the following:
DumbAsp
RattlerBrains
Mambasement
Adder-all
Krait and Barefaced
His company probably already was not computers related. Being a cloud computing hosting company probably meant that he rented rooms to people wanting to calculate something about clouds in the sky. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Someone else here reported position 5 for the Wikipedia entry. This is already a strong hint that the positions you see are absolutely not indicative on what others see. And certainly not about what others would have seen 17 years ago.
Just for the record, I get the Wikipedia entry for the snake at position 4. However that's the German language article ...
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
... running on a JVM written in JavaScript.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Well yes I know Google gives different results to different people, however if I get basically exclusively Python-the-programming-language results (which surprised me - I'd expect a bit more snakes), then it's hard to imagine that someone doing even basic research on a trademark can not find this.
Also as I understand they try to register the trademark now, after not having used it for many years. Trademarks do not come with expiry dates like patents or copyrights, however you may lose a trademark, even if registered, if you do not use it for some time (a few years is long enough to use that argument).
Python is not even 17 years old, nor is Google. If they had been using the Python trademark for all those 17 years it'd be theirs. And in that case they should've started complaining to Python the programming language long time ago.
good thing he didn't try to trademark brainf**k - those guys don't mess around they go straight to the syntaxical point
You count IKEA as fancy furniture? You poor deprived person.
I don't know about the whole of Europe, but at least in the UK, registering a trademark is just a process to help you prove you own it, by having it there as proof. You still own a trademark by establishing a brand, even if you don't register it.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
The story about not knowing about Python was actually fairly believable because it correlates well with the kinds of actions the company has taken and the other things the CEO said. So now it remains, how is it that his technical staff couldn't tell him the problem?
I mean, someone had to be told to actually put something at the domain. Someone had to make up the graphics. Someone had to publish the graphics on the site. I'm certain that some people in his staff were groaning and clutching their heads over what kind of problems this would cause them. How is it that none of them could come to him and tell him what the problem was?
I can only conclude that he makes it impossible for his staff to question his decisions. CEOs like that are awful to work under.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
If you google the word "python" THE TOP FOUR HITS ARE ALL ABOUT THE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE. After that, we have one Wikipedia article on the snake, and then FOUR MORE ABOUT THE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE.
That's actually sort of telling that Google ranks the Wikipedia page for the language higher than the Wikipedia page for the animal. If you ask anyone on the street to define "python" they'll refer to the animal, but apparently the vast majority of people who use Google to search for it end up clicking on pages about the language.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
And you'll need windows the see the cloud.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Packet loss from hungry eagles is unacceptable for long links. Screech owls perform notably better due to their symbiotic relationship with blind snakes, but the screech owl's low carrying capacity and nocturnal habit make them unsuitable for general purpose avian carriers, and severely restrict their application in general.
Ctrl-Shift-N or Ctrl-Shift-P to open a new private window. Google search Python, and you still get the programming language first.
If you go with other search engines, perhaps DuckDuckGo, you still get a rapid result for the python programming language (although the first in DDG is for Monty Python.) Still a wall of context pointing to programming languages, but that's as far of a deviation you get.
I'm not sure what you're saying. The fact that Microsoft has been using the term "Windows" for their OS should make it untrademarkable by anyone else. The fact that they have actually trademarked it doesn't affect that. (Though they hastily dropped a suit against Lindows when the trademark was challenged, just so the question of whether it's really trademarkable at all never came up in court. At least in the US.) The simple fact that they've been using the term for so long is what makes it untrademarkable by anyone else. Registration is the just the gravy that makes it easy for them to prove they've been using the term.
That's how Linus ended up with the trademark to Linux. Someone else tried to claim it, and he demonstrated that he'd been using the term for his software for years, so the PTO re-assigned the trademark to him.
The domain matters. Computer software would definitely be out. Anything else computer related is probably out, but I didn't want to leap too far in my claims.
Screech owls often eat the blind snakes, though, resulting in high packet loss.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'